Professor Parenting, a.k.a. Brandi Stupica, blogs about the ways in which her knowledge of how to raise healthy, well-adjusted kids collides with actually trying to do it.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Attachment Parenting Won’t Make Your Kid Secure

I spout off about lots of things related to child
development because I have a PhD in Developmental Psychology (see, for example,
The
Dos and Don’ts of Screen Time for Kids). Sometimes I even use my Mom Card
as my authority to spout off (see People Are Rude: Pregnancy Edition, Parts 1,
2,
3,
and 4).
I know a lot about child development, but I’m an expert in attachment theory and
research (the study
of the close, long-lasting, emotional bonds that kids develop with caregivers,
and adults develop with each other, like in romantic relationships). I wrote
two theses
and a dissertation
on attachment and my grand-advisor is Mary Ainsworth who, with
John Bowlby, created
attachment theory. I’ve even discovered and written
about some pretty cool things on attachment. I’m also certified to teach
classes
on how to foster security in your child. I’ve given you my pedigree and blabbed
on and on about how educated I am for two reasons: One, I’m pretentious and want you to think I’m
important. Two, I want to assure you I know what the heck I’m talking about
before I get into the meat of my exposition on how “attachment parenting”
won’t make your kid secure.

We all want our kids to grow up healthy and well-adjusted.
Many of you know that a great foundation for raising a happy, healthy child is
to parent in a way that your kid is securely attached to you, which means that
your child will use you as a secure base to explore the world and a haven of
safety from which to return. Having this secure frame-of-mind supports their
developing into all-around well-functioning individuals in many
ways. Due to the amazing powers of having a secure attachment, some of you
have likely heard of this thing called “attachment parenting” that purports to ensure
that your child is securely attached. Not surprisingly, many have adopted the
associated parenting techniques leading parents to bed-share indefinitely, eschew
sleep training, breastfeed forever, and baby wear all the time. I don’t have
any problem with any of these things in particular. In fact, I generally see
these parenting techniques in a positive light. If bed-sharing makes your life
easier, do so (with the proper precautions,
of course). It’s certainly made it easier for me to get some goddamn sleep. If
you don’t want to sleep train, don’t. I did it, but it can be really difficult in
the beginning. If you want to breastfeed your children until they self-wean,
go for it! It’s certainly the best food you can provide your child. Baby
wearing is a nice way to be able to calm your bubala and get some shit done.
Again, I say, do it if it suits you.

Here’s the kicker, however. If you are doing these things
only because you want your child to be securely attached, you can stop now. The
only thing you need to do to help your child develop a secure attachment to you
is to generally be available and sensitively responsive to your child when he
or she needs you. As such, “attachment parenting” can result in raising an
insecurely attached child if you are doing all those “attachment parenting”
things in a way that you are unavailable (mentally checked out, for example),
insensitive (harsh or intrusive), and/or unresponsive to your child’s needs for
exploration and/or connection with you.

I know you might be thinking that being sensitively
responsive and available sounds pretty esoteric, so let me pass along some
words of wisdom on the issue that come from my training and research with the Circle of Security (a parenting
intervention that has been shown to increase attachment security). Here it goes…
“Always be bigger, stronger, wiser, and kind. Whenever possible, follow my
child’s need. Whenever necessary, take charge.” This statement
means that if your child is exploring, be there watching over him or her. Let
your child take the lead in directing his or her own play whenever possible. If
you need to, kindly take charge (for example, your child is about to hurt him
or herself or break yet another object in your home). If your child is upset,
be with him or her until the emotional turmoil is resolved. Don’t yell or
punish your child for his or her emotional expressions. Recognize, validate,
empathize, and be with your children (physically and mentally) during their
emotional ups and downs. Don’t be mean. You can and should discipline your
child, but you should do so with kindness and empathy. In fact, as your
children’s future college professor, PLEASE set clear, firm boundaries for
appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Discipline, however, does not have to be
the angry, punitive discipline that you might have received as a child.
Discipline can be kind, gentle, firm, and
effective.

Related to this issue of “being with” your children during
their emotional meltdowns and discipline, let’s talk about time-outs. I know
you may think what I’m about to say is outrageous, but avoid using use time-outs as a form of discipline because they aren’t kind. Time-outs send your
children the message that when they misbehave or have intense emotions, you
will withdraw your love (that’s mean), which will work against your goal of
helping them develop a sense that you will be there for them when they need
you. This idea isn’t new—others have the same view.

I hear you cursing at me for telling you that time-outs are
a no-no, but maybe it’s because you wouldn’t know how else to get your kids to
stop acting like wild animals if it weren’t for time-outs? Let me offer a
replacement: Reward behavior you want to increase as much as possible and when
absolutely necessary execute negative consequences for behavior your want to
decrease. The thing I find the hardest is rewarding good behavior because your
kids are generally not acting up. The key is to try to see more of those
moments and let your kid have some praise for that behavior (e.g., verbal
praise, TV time, playing a video game). When your kids are acting like maniacs,
quickly and firmly correct the behavior and provide them with an idea of how
they should act. Tell them if they misbehave in that way again what the
non-time-out consequence will be (e.g., loss of TV time, not getting to play
with their favorite bath toy). If the misbehavior happens again, quickly, firmly,
and as kindly as possible, enforce the consequence. I’ve said it before, but I
love it so I’ll say it again—consider creating a token economy in which
good behavior earns tokens that can be exchanged for rewards and misbehavior
results in tokens being taken away.

In sum, the techniques that “attachment parenting”
require are nice parenting techniques, none of which I have any problems with.
If you enjoy them, by all means, continue, but if you hate “attachment
parenting” then stop, especially if you are doing so only to make your kid
secure. These techniques cannot replace being available and sensitively
responsive to your child’s needs for exploration and comfort, which research
has shown
over and over is the path to making a child securely attached. At best,
these techniques can be thought of as nice supplements to helping your child
develop a close, secure emotional bond to you.

I completely agree. I just wanted to point out that it's not that great of an idea to do it every time you discipline and why. There was a big push for it when we were growing up and many of us spent hours of our lives in a time out chair, so given that we tend to parent as we were parented, I wanted to shed a bit of light on the issue from an attachment perspective.

About Me

I earned my Ph.D. in 2012 at the University of Maryland in Developmental Psychology. Since then, I've become an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Alma College and a mom. I started blogging to share how I balance both my knowledge of what helps kids develop best with my limitations of being a human on the front line of motherhood.